Shared-Socio-Economic Pathways

Socio-economic pathways determine future climate impacts and costs thereof. Pragmatically, we have referred to a global reference socio-economic pathway (represented by SSP2 in the IPCC process) and derived figures for the core economic, demographic, land-use and (qualitatively) technological development in Austria, which again frame the sectoral development assumptions necessary to follow a scenario-based cost assessment approach. In principal, trend projections and existing studies have been used to describe a single country, here applied for Austria, in 2030/2050 that is growing slowly in terms of population (0.27 % p.a.) and medium in terms of GDP (1.65 % p.a.) and in which forests, meadows and settlements expand in the north-east-south crescent- at the cost of arable land, within which further intensification will take place. Policy assumptions as well as technological change have been set to a medium path, at which risk zoning put forward, the EU integration `muddles through´ and no technological wonders are taken into account. A reference scenario might be regarded as least uncertain-which is not true-but we might expect more volatile developments to equilibrate over some decades. The Austria we expose to climate change by 2050 is significantly different from nowadays: Its population is older and its public and private infrastructure density is higher-at least two factors that might influence future climate costs of inaction.